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Track-Two Diplomacy toward an Israeli-Palestinian Solution, 1978–2014 is an important insider account of a crucial set of negotiations aimed at settling a seemingly endless conflict. It brings out many new details of negotiating sessions and internal policy and strategy debates, and it is especially insightful on the thirteen-year process that led to the September 1993 Oslo Accords. Signed on the White House lawn in the presence of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat, the treaty was a landmark occasion followed shortly thereafter by the unraveling of the Israeli-Palestinian permanent status negotiations. The historical narrative focuses on series of negotiations and ongoing efforts under particular Israeli governments. Each chapter concludes with discussions of successes, failures, and lessons learned.

Yair Hirschfeld is a lecturer at the University of Haifa and director general of the Economic Cooperation Foundation in Israel.

"With a tremendous amount of detail and perspective to the story of peacemaking during the past thirty years, the book fixes the historical record in substantial ways. Excellent work."

— Ambassador Daniel C. Kurtzer, Princeton University

"This is an extremely rich and valuable volume. The overall narrative is remarkably complete. There are also copious and detailed notes throughout, mostly pertaining to the events in which Hirschfeld participated, or at least observed, and also often bringing in relevant scholarly literature."

— Mark Tessler, University of Michigan

"This book is... a personal account that is likely to remain an unrivalled source for the behind-the-scenes story."

— David McDowall - Times Literary Supplement

"[ Track-Two Diplomacy toward an Israeli-Palestinian Solution, 1978–2014] is a valuable monograph, which the author has reconstructed from interviews with many participants, and from his unique collection of policy papers and minutes of meetings. Each chapter is framed within a rigorous structure, breaking down the stages of various ECF ventures, both successful and failed, and concluding with a balance sheet of 'lessons learned.'"

— Neal Caplan - Middle East Journal

"Painstaking and often very personal account of over thirty years of track-two diplomatic efforts of peacemaking between Israeli and Palestinian interlocutors... Relying on countless personal papers and interviews as well as the unpublished policy documents... he [Yair Hirshfeld] reflects upon the trial and error back-channel negotiations that continued even in times of official stalemate, undeterred by violence and war."